The Congressional Research Service has prepared a new report that takes a look at the requirement that Medicare patients spend three days as hospital inpatients before Medicare will pay for post-discharge skilled nursing care.
The report reviews the current requirements for Medicare coverage of skilled nursing care, describes the role of hospital outpatient observation care in clouding the question of whether individual patients have spent three days in the hospital, and examines proposals for changing the three-day requirement. It also addresses the need for greater transparency in hospital decisions to classify patients as under observation status rather as inpatients, the need to educate patients about the impact of such classification decisions, and the potential impact of changing the current policy.
Go here to see the CRS report Medicare’s Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) Three-Day Inpatient Stay Requirement.